Beaten at Arsenal on Tuesday night, the Blues have only known defeat since the arrival of Frank Lampard on the bench in early April.
Acquired less than a year ago by American businessman Todd Boehly, after the withdrawal of former Russian owner Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea club is completely missing out on its season. The winner of the Champions League in 2021 will not play in the European Cup next season, and is not even mathematically maintained in the Premier League yet, while he has five games left to play. His defeat against Arsenal, Tuesday May 2 (3-1), further underlined the gap which separates the Blues from the leaders of the English championship.
The only satisfaction of this new failed evening: Chelsea scored. Noni Madueke managed to salvage the honor by reducing the scoreline as the Gunners led 3-0 at the break, but the English youngster netted only his side’s second goal in six games. By naming his former glory Frank Lampard on his bench in early April to save the end of the season, the owners of Chelsea expected an electric shock rather than six consecutive defeats. Eliminated by Real Madrid in the Champions League, the Blues sink a little deeper into the soft underbelly of the Premier League, wedged between Crystal Palace and Bournemouth.
Inadequate recruitment performance
The observation is all the more striking as the club has achieved an XXL transfer window this season, with 330 million euros spent during the January transfer market (deemed less active than that of the summer), more than the 78 teams from La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1 combined. “The size of the locker room had to be increased because it could no longer accommodate all the players in the squad.quipped defender Thiago Silva after the elimination against Real in C1. The positive thing is that we have very good players now. But on the other hand, there are bound to be players unhappy with their playing time. The coach can only field eleven players out of the 30s in the squad.”
Among the sixteen reinforcements arrived since last summer, the choice of the owners turned in particular to several attackers like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Joao Felix, Raheem Sterling or even Mykhaylo Mudryk, bought 100 million euros (including 30 million in bonuses) from Shakhtar Donetsk to finally spend more time on the bench than on the field. Recruits with insufficient performance, which the three coaches who succeeded each other on the bench this season, Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and Franck Lampard, failed to highlight. The club thus only has the sixteenth attack in the championship (31 goals in 33 games).
With just nine Premier League wins, the Londoners are heading into their second season without a European Cup since 1996-97, the other dating back to 2016-17. And even if they are nine points ahead and one game behind the first relegation player, it is to be expected that the Blues will still drop a few points on the way. An infernal schedule awaits them since they will have on the road Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle and even Bournemouth, who have become their new direct opponent (39 points each), the symbol of their downgrading.